Winter 2015 | Nanga Parbat: A Mountain to be Climbed by First Week of February

“The mountain needs to be summited before the first week of February or else the storms just get nasty,” Ian Overton, American climber who attempted Nanga Parbat in winter 2012/13, told Explorersweb in a recent interview. This statement is strongly supported by weather pattern and statistics of winter attempts on Nanga Parbat.

A) Historically, almost all winter Nanga Parbat expeditions reached BC during the month of December.

B) Highest point of 85% winter expeditions was reached before February 10th. David Gottler and Tomek Mackiewicz’s 2013/14 attempt, when they reached 7200m on March 1st, is the only exception.

C) Similarly, all winter teams, except last year’s two Schell route expeditions, abandoned Base Camp before the start of March.

Polish climber Tomek Mackiewiz strongly emphasized on early arrival and quick summit attempt, this year. He arrived in Pakistan before the mid of November. After pre-expedition acclimatization in Rupal valley and quick trip to 6000m on Diamir side, Tomek (along with Elisabeth) managed to climb till 7800m in a good weather window around second/third week of January. However, snow and wind in past ten days haven’t let any team to resume the climb.

Arrivals at BC
Contrary to aforementioned statistics, two Nanga Parbat teams have just reached the mountain this week. Iranians’ arrival was delayed due to visa issues. Spaniard Alex Txikon has to arrange Nanga Parbat expedition on quick basis after Chinese authorities cancelled his team’s K2 permit. At BC, the climbers were welcomed by snowstorm and bad weather. They are awaiting improvement in weather to start working on Kinshofer route.

Going Up
On January 28th, Russian team messaged from Rupal BC, “We begin to climb up”. A day earlier, the team reopened route from BC to ABC after snowstorm covered the tracks. Previously, they had made a deposit at around 7150m on Schell route.

It’s not known whether Russian team wants to make a summit attempt or will be returning to BC. Mountain-Forecast predicts bad weather for a week, though.

Daniele Nardi
Recent snowstorm dumped lot of snow at Diamir BC and the Italian climber is still waiting for avalanches to ease up, before resuming his climb on Mummery Rib. Yesterday, he wrote, “we beat the track towards Camp1, the sun comes out shyly as we try to figure out how much snow dumped on the mountain. We wait patiently while we make 4 laughter.”